(Withdrawn) Profiles of Adversity Among Middle-Aged and Older Adults in the United States: A Multigroup Latent Class Comparison of Native Whites, Native Minorities, and Immigrants

Background and Purpose: Cumulative inequality theory highlights how structural inequality and oppressive systems create disparities in opportunities, access to resources, and exposure to adversity throughout the life span, which in turn affects late-life well-being. Abundant research supports this theory, showing that compared to native-born Whites, both native-born ethnic minorities and the foreign-born (i.e., immigrants) have greater exposure to various forms of adversity rooted in individual, socio-relational, and neighborhood contexts. What remains unknown is whether there are distinctive “profiles of adversity”, that is, overall typological patterns of adversity among older populations, and whether such adversity profiles differ by race and/or nativity status. To address this research gap, this study explored heterogeneity in the typological patterns of adversity among middle-aged and older adults in the United States and compared the adversity profiles among native-born white, native-born ethnic minorities, and immigrants.

Methods: Data was from the 2018 psychosocial assessment of the Health and Retirement Study (N = 5,534), which is a nationally representative study of the population aged 51 years and older in the United States. Ten binary indicators were used to identify various adversities experienced by the respondents in the following domains: individual (low education, poverty, poor self-rated health, chronic life stressors), social relation (low positive social support, high negative social support, low civic engagement, perceived discrimination), and neighborhood (low social cohesion, high neighborhood disorder). Latent class analysis (LCA) was employed to identify underlying typological patterns of the 10 adversity indicators in the entire sample. Multigroup LCA with 1) unconstrained model, 2) model with equal response probability (i.e., measurement invariance), and 3) fully constrained model was then used to compare the latent structures and their prevalence among the three groups: native-born White (n = 3,603), native-born ethnic minorities (n = 1,209), and immigrants (n = 722).

Results: LCA identified four profiles of adversity in the entire sample: 1) low adversity (60.05%), with the lowest likelihood of experiencing any forms of adversity; 2) the socially marginalized (13.67%), characterized by the highest likelihood of experiencing low positive social support, high negative social support, chronic stressors, and discrimination; 3) the socioeconomically disadvantaged (15.69%), characterized by the highest likelihood of having low education, poverty, poor self-rated health, and lack of civic engagement, and 4) neighborhood-derived adversity(10.59%), characterized by the highest likelihood of experiencing low social cohesion and high neighborhood disorder. Comparing different models of multigroup LCA revealed that the four adversity profiles were structurally the same (i.e., measurement invariance) across the three race/nativity groups. The group differences were primary in the probabilities of experiencing each adversity profile, with White older adults most likely having the low adversity profile, ethnic minorities most likely having the socially marginalized and neighborhood-derived adversity, and immigrant older adults most likely having socioeconomics disadvantaged adversity.

Conclusions and Implications: The current study identified four typological structures of adversity among middle-aged and older adults. Findings highlight the importance of examining heterogeneity in adversity among disadvantaged populations and the need to develop tailored social programs that meet the unique needs of different vulnerable populations.